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Hezbollah Chief Says Group Lost Its Supply Route through Syria

Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address from an unknown location, in this still image from video released on December 5, 2024. Al Manar TV via Reuters
Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address from an unknown location, in this still image from video released on December 5, 2024. Al Manar TV via Reuters
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Hezbollah Chief Says Group Lost Its Supply Route through Syria

Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address from an unknown location, in this still image from video released on December 5, 2024. Al Manar TV via Reuters
Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address from an unknown location, in this still image from video released on December 5, 2024. Al Manar TV via Reuters

Hezbollah head Sheikh Naim Qassem on Saturday that the Lebanese armed group had lost its supply route through Syria, in his first comments since the toppling of close ally President Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago by a sweeping rebel offensive.

Under Assad, Iran-backed Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, opposition fighters captured the capital Damascus.

"Yes, Hezbollah has lost the military supply route through Syria at this stage, but this loss is a detail in the resistance's work," Qassem said in a televised speech on Saturday, without mentioning Assad by name.

"A new regime could come, and this route could return to normal, and we could look for other ways," he added.

Hezbollah started intervening in Syria in 2013 to help Assad fight opposition forces seeking to topple him at that time. Last week, as opposition forces approached Damascus, the group sent supervising officers to oversee a withdrawal of its fighters there.

More than 50 years of Assad family rule has now been replaced with a transitional caretaker government put in place by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate that spearheaded the opposition offensive.

Qassem said Hezbollah "cannot judge these new forces until they stabilize" and "take clear positions", but said he hoped that the Lebanese and Syrian peoples and governments could continue to cooperate.

"We also hope that this new ruling party will consider Israel an enemy and not normalize relations with it. These are the headlines that will affect the nature of the relationship between us and Syria," Qassem said.

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire across Lebanon's southern border for nearly a year in hostilities triggered by the Gaza war, before Israel went on the offensive in September, killing most of Hezbollah's top leadership.

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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)

Israel is considering options to respond to repeated attacks fired from Yemen in the past few days, the latest of which was a Houthi missile strike that injured more than a dozen people in Tel Aviv.
But military experts say Israel should first consider an intelligence plan for confronting the new front after it faced significant difficulties in both defending against and responding to the Houthi attacks.
On Saturday morning, Houthis launched a missile that triggered sirens throughout central Israel at 3:44 am. It was the second attack since Thursday.
Israel's military said the projectile landed in Tel Aviv's southern Jaffa area, adding that attempts to intercept a missile from Yemen failed.
“The incident is still being thoroughly investigated,” the army said, adding that following initial investigations by the Israeli Air Force and Home Front Command, “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, both regarding interception and early warning.”
Israeli military experts say the recent Houthi attacks have revealed serious security gaps in Israel's air defense systems.
“The pressing question now is why none of the other of Israel’s air defense layers managed to intercept the warhead,” wrote Yedioth Ahronoth's Ron Ben-Yishai. “The likely explanation is the late detection and the flat trajectory, which prevented the operation of all available defense apparatus.”
He said these incidents might expose a critical vulnerability in the army’s air defense system protecting Israel’s civilian and military home front.
According to Ben-Yishai, two main reasons might explain Saturday’s interception failure.
The first is that the missile was launched in a “flattened” ballistic trajectory, possibly from an unexpected direction.
As a result, Israeli defenses may not have identified it in time, leading to its late discovery and insufficient time for interceptors to operate.
He said the second, and more likely scenario is that Iran has developed a maneuverable warhead.
Such a warhead separates from the missile during the final third of its trajectory and maneuvers mid-flight—executing pre-programmed course changes—to hit its designated target, he wrote.
And while Israel has launched initial investigations into the failure of Israeli defense systems to intercept the missiles, it is now examining the nature, date and location of its response.
When Houthis launched their first missile attack on Israel last Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them, saying, “The Houthis will learn the hard way.”
But Israeli political analyst Avi Ashkenazi wrote in the Maariv newspaper that Israel should look at reality with open eyes and say out loud that it cannot deal with the Houthi threat from Yemen, and has failed to face them.
Last Thursday, 14 Israeli Air Force fighter jets, alongside refuelers and spy planes, flew some 2,000 kilometers and dropped over 60 munitions on Houthi “military targets” along Yemen’s western coast and near the capital Sanaa.
The targets included fuel and oil depots, two power stations, and eight tugboats used at the Houthi-controlled ports.
But the Maariv newspaper warned about the increasing involvement of Iran in supporting the Houthi forces.
“Iran has invested more in the Houthis in recent weeks following the collapse of the Shiite axis, making the Houthi movement a leader of this axis,” the newspaper noted.
Underscoring the failures of Israel’s air defense systems, Maariv said the “Arrow” missile defense system, Israel's main line of defense against ballistic missiles, had failed four times in a row to intercept missiles, including three launched from Yemen and one from Lebanon.
Yedioth Ahronoth's Ben-Yishai also warned that the threat posed by maneuvering warheads on Iran's heavy, long-range missiles would become existential for Israel should Iran succeed in developing nuclear warheads for these missiles.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 said that in recent months, the Middle East has changed beyond recognition.
The channel said that for the first time in more than half a century, a direct and threat-free air corridor has been opened to Iran through the Middle East. Israel will benefit from this corridor to launch almost daily attacks on the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, it said.
Channel 12 also reported that according to the Israeli military, the new threat-free corridor will help Israel launch a future attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
“From Israel's perspective, the fall of the Assad regime and the collapse of the Iranian ring of fire are changing the balance of power in the Middle East,” the report added.